Lease of life: Creating firmwide efficiencies to move offices

Key takeaway points

1. Think creatively – cordless phones are ?more expensive, but they cut other costs ?by releasing people from their desks in all sorts of productive ways.

2. Buddying can work well – place reformers who embrace change as allies with those who are uncomfortable with change.

3. Work with people one to one – it’s often the small stuff that causes resistance. If people are worried about hygiene in sharing desks and equipment, ignore it at your peril; ?there’s often a quid pro quo.

4. Ask what people want and then look ?for crowd pleasers – if there is one overwhelming thing that matters, ?make sure you satisfy it.

5. Learn from your peers and other similar sized firms – use your networks, or join new ones to exchange ideas and information.

6. If you find yourself working on an optimum usage plan with enough working space for anything less than 100 per cent of your staff, remember that on day one of the new regime everyone will come into the office at once. That’s ok, it will never happen again, but you need to prepare your response.

 

Moving home is said to be one of life’s most stressful activities, and it’s no less so when the move involves the offices of a professional firm. Many of the concerns are the same when it comes down to it. Can you afford the move or is it vanity calling you up the property ladder? When times are a bit unpredictable, should you just stay put and renovate or extend?

We recently relocated to a building with a great design and a ?great location, which entirely matched our aspirations. No.1 New York Street is an iconic 12-storey building in a major redevelopment in the heart of Manchester, in which we have 9,000 square feet spread across the entire eighth floor.

The back story to our office relocation in 2010 reads like a series of contradictions. Our rental costs per square foot have increased, but the relocation has been cost-neutral. We have almost halved our floor space, yet staffing has increased and there is space for more.

It has certainly proved to be the right move, allowing us to reshape our infrastructure and become more client-responsive. The move has ?been achieved without costing us anything extra and we’ve already ?seen a 19 per cent increase in fee income.

Being in our new offices has told people we mean business. They’re not ostentatious: they’re smart, modern and help with recruiting. Others see the firm as willing to invest, and as a result we’ve made around six significant high-level lateral hires in the past six months.

The move was two years in the planning and we made the decision before the recession hit. Although we could have changed course, ?we decided it was still the right thing to do.

We now have just under 100 staff, including 19 partners among a ?total of 55 lawyers, plus paralegals and support staff. As a 70-year-old practice, we have a traditional core but also a fairly young management team with most of the partners under 40, and our succession issues have been dealt with. We’re set on building our strong position in the mid-tier market.

Catalyst for change

The catalyst for the move was our firm coming to the end of a 25-year lease. We could have held over, but felt the old building was tired and ?not in keeping with the firm that we had become.

It’s too easy to stop seeing the familiar, so to show the partners what our clients were experiencing, ?I did a photo shoot from the client’s perspective. Seeing the maze-like route clients had to follow through our busy office to arrive at a meeting room convinced everyone that something had to change, including the inevitable stacks of paper. In return, I committed to ?it being a cost-neutral exercise.

The move had to add up in cash terms. Negotiating a reverse premium that was equal to the dilapidation costs on the old building was a big step on the path to a cash-neutral move. There were a lot of other costs involved in the move, but the aim was to cover ?those by the three-year rent period ?we negotiated.

I was very keen to get the whole firm onto one single floor. In the old building we had four floors, and at times it felt as though we were four firms. Certainly we had kitchens on every floor, meeting rooms on every floor and a resistance to interact or use facilities on different floors. Different departments had different ways of doing things: some good, some less so. I wanted to carry everyone together, taking the best bits.

Learning from others is always good, so I had discussed and tested my initial thoughts with our peers in the LawNet network, being firms of a similar size and profile. I reviewed what was being done by our main competitors and national players.

But bringing in a firm of so-called space architects was undoubtedly the best move we made. It was going to be a big challenge to take people from a loosely open-plan format with allocated seating in pods of four, along with a few separate offices for partners, through to the hot desking and bench seating we envisaged.

The most important input from the space architects was a survey which revealed that, over a six-month period, we never had more than 70 per cent of our staff in the building at any one time. They were in court, on holiday, seeing clients or working part time – so nearly a third of our desks and chairs were vacant during any given day.

We also discovered that our meeting rooms could play host to a game of musical chairs where no one ever loses, ?as there was a seat for every single member of staff, along with a 30-seat boardroom that was used to capacity ?once or twice a year at most.

That was a true turning point in terms of crystallising what came next. It enabled us to cut costs significantly, despite our base rental price increasing from £16 per square foot to nearly £19, as we moved from 16,000 square feet down to 9,000 square feet. And there is still enough space to grow staffing by a further 20 per cent.

Persuading the masses

The space architects ran working groups to find out what people wanted, to help to get them on board with the change. Groups were put together carefully, identifying who might be uncomfortable with change and putting them together with allies who were confident about it. They were asked what they liked and disliked about the old premises. No partners were included, because it would influence how the group responded.

Concerns included a lack of air conditioning, so we used negatives like this, as well as the positives, to devise a wish list for the new building. Obviously people’s worries didn’t go away just because we’d promised to tackle things they were unhappy about. The space architects had to tick as many boxes as possible in putting forward a plan.

Location was the only true ‘like’ in this exercise. We have always been right in the heart of Manchester city centre, although many of the professional firms have moved out of town. Staff liked being near the shops at lunchtime and being able to walk from the main transport links. So that was one decision made: we would stay in the centre of town. In fact, we managed to relocate by just one street – making it an easy crowd pleaser.

Next, we had to work through the cultural change with staff. When we had the proposal, rather than publishing it and leaving it open to grassroots discussion, I held one-to-one sessions with every member of staff. I ran through the ideas and asked for their reactions, encouraging them to tell me if they were excited, worried or anything else.

Some were very positive and, of course, others had anxieties. One big thing that created concern was the move from the existing four-person pod arrangement to the proposed bench desks, the consequent potential increase in noise and how to control germs on shared equipment.

By listening to their concerns, I was able to offer solutions and reassurance, while running through the floor plan. Based on there being ten lawyers in a team, the plan was to have nine seats available. We had done the stats and this was the sensible and realistic option. And everyone agreed that it didn’t make sense to have their ‘own’ desk.

The concerns about increased noise have certainly not been borne out, as it feels more like a library in the working space, but this is partly because we responded by giving everyone a cordless phone. This means they can move away from their desk to one of the designated areas for lengthy conversations.

The cordless phones have helped shape the way we work in many ways. For example, we are all referring clients more immediately, simply walking to where a colleague is and handing over the phone.

The concerns over hygiene with shared equipment were solved quite simply through a trade-off that took the whole firm forward. We explained that the cleaners spent a lot of their time simply moving papers around, in their efforts to clean. If desks were clear, then cleaners could thoroughly clean all equipment every night and satisfy this concern. This opened the way to a double-win, as it was essential to have clear desks if we were to move to bench seating.

We introduced a clean desk policy a year before the move. In the new offices, everyone has access to nearby short-term filing drawers to store live files, with main file storage in the middle of the building.

Firmwide impact

Our bench working environment – a version of hot desking – works on so many levels. Sometimes you end up sitting with another team because that’s where the space is, but that’s good, as you get to meet other people. Sometimes, you can group together as a team to work together for a specific client or project, so that’s good too.

Most professional service firms are operating on a breakdown dictated by traditional disciplines – such as employment, private client or corporate – but these distinctions mean nothing to clients, who simply want a team that will work on their problems. We are doing just that and responding to clients on a sector basis.

For example, property, employment and commercial lawyers all work together within the healthcare sector, providing a turnkey solution for GPs.

But the sector distinctions aren’t prescriptive – that’s the cornerstone of our new style of working. Whatever way we need to work together, our operational infrastructure isn’t going to hold us back.

Other space benefits have come through a change in attitude toward meeting space. For client visits, we have ensured that the front of the office is completely separate.

However, our 30-seat boardroom has gone and now we seat a maximum of 20 across two meeting rooms, with a removable divider. On the rare occasion that we need more, we go to the hotel across the road.

For internal meetings, the kitchens are in constant use throughout the day. People wanted to be able to have hot food, and that’s allowed at breakfast and lunch times, but in between the kitchens are informal meeting areas.

There are so many benefits to the new way of working. Productivity has shot up on a year-on-year basis and fees billed were up 19 per cent in the first seven months. Having brought in new people, some of that increase came through their followings, but the rest is internal growth.

We’ve seen camaraderie shoot up. Everyone can see what others are doing and they interact much more.

Every piece of space is well used, but we have room to grow. Our current configuration seats nine but is capable of taking 12, allowing us to add up to 20 more people on this same floor layout.

The move has also provided unexpected boosts for compliance. The clean desk policy enforces better file management. The cordless phones and open plan area mean we are more likely to avoid giving a view on a client’s problem that is outside our own area of expertise, because it’s easy to walk over and give the phone to someone who can provide the right advice.

Looking ahead

My fee-earning time is now around ?40 per cent. I focus on work that ?demands my specific knowledge and will boost the firm’s profile, otherwise I delegate down and concentrate on building the business. The attitude of ?the partners is that it is not ‘our’ firm, ?with the inevitable focus on immediate returns; we are simply the custodians and must commit to building a successful business with a long-term future.

We’re keen to remain an independent mid-size firm, so nurturing talent is crucial, whether it’s retaining young lawyers coming up through the firm or attracting the lateral hires we need to fill gaps and enable us to up our game plan in key sectors.

We need to drive on efficiencies, but being clear about our aspirations and positioning in the mid-sector makes that easier. We may grow by acquisition, if there’s a firm out there which is the right fit, but everything needs to be just right and my main focus is on growth from within.

We want to be the best in Manchester in the mid tier and go on to be 100 years old. I may have retired by then, but will certainly come to the party – and will make sure I arrive early to get a seat.